Dr. Zackry Stevenson successfully defended his thesis on 11/15/24 titled, "Iron cycling and metal utilization by phototrophic and diazotrophic bacteria in iron-rich aquatic systems."

Congratulations, Dr. Stevenson! We wish you the best in all your future endeavors! 

Michelle Chamberlain was recently awarded a fellowship through the NASA Iowa Space Grant Consortium for her work in the ancient ocean analog Deming Lake.

Congratulations Michelle!

MGSO hosted sessions for the Fall 2024 Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) conference at Iowa State. Students in grades 8-10 learned about the wonderful (diverse) world of microbes and participated in a hands-on activity of making their own Winogradsky columns with water collected from Lake LaVerne. Thank you to all who volunteered at these events and helped these young minds explore STEM fields!  

Volunteers:

Hannah Watkins 

Marissa Stroud 

Ica Tongco 

Sarah DeWolf 

Catherine Batchelder 

Jared Meinen-Jochum and Caleb Skow of the laboratory of Dr. Melha Mellata recently published an article in mSphere titled, “Layer segmented filamentous bacteria colonize and impact gut health of broiler chickens”. In this article, layer chicken-derived inoculum of segmented filamentous bacteria is demonstrated to confer early gut immune maturation and reduce the level of Enterobacteriaceae in the gut of broiler chickens.  

 Link: https://doi.org/10.1128/msphere.00492-24 

Link to article: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acssynbio.4c00312  

Celeste Snyder, a graduate student in the IM program working at the USDA-ARS, was a co-author of a recent Nature publication titled: "Dairy cows inoculated with highly pathogenic avian influenza virus H5N1" 

Snyder's research team was the first to perform two successful experimental infection models in cattle with H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b. Infection, pathogenesis, and transmission results can be used to inform intervention and vaccination strategies. 

Link: https://lnkd.in/gEw2HDQS

The 84^th annual meeting of the North Central branch of the American Society for Microbiology was hosted on October 4th at Minnesota State University in Mankato, MN. The SSE-Lab group represented the IM program at this year’s proceedings. We are pleased to report that two IM members took first place at the conference for their presentations: 

First place oral presentation: Dylan Schultz 

Title: “Unraveling cytoplasmic incompatibility caused by the intracellular symbiont Cardinium hertigii” 

First place poster presentation: Faith Rahic-Seggerman 

Title: “Towards a Better Understanding of the Microbial Community Dynamics in Response to Digestate Recirculation in “Grass2Gas” Systems” 

Dr. Melha Mellata (IM DOGE) and her recently graduated student Logan Ott were interviewed by ASM Press on their recent article published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology (AEM) journal “Dietary zinc supplementation inhibits bacterial plasmid conjugation in vitro by regulating plasmid replication (rep) and transfer (tra) genes” 

Link to the Press Release

The 2024 Midwest Geobiology Symposium occurred on September 28th, organized by the Swanner laboratory. This interdisciplinary event showcased presentations from a variety of research fields, encompassing topics such as "Investigating the Corrosion Outcomes of Complex Microbial Communities" and "Characterizing the Indian Summer Monsoon Hydroclimate Over the Last 3,000 Years Using Leaf Wax Biomarkers in Lacustrine Sediments."

Binayak Raj Pandey, a first-year PhD student in Microbiology student at Dr. Xiang's lab, was awarded third place for the poster presentation in the Iowa NSF EPSCoR Chemurgy 2.0 Symposium held on July 24, 2024. The poster's title was "Effective production of microbially-produced bacterial nanocellulose." Researchers from Iowa State University, The University of Iowa, The University of Northern Iowa, Dordt University, and Central College presented and participated in the symposium. Congratulations Binayak!

Congratulations to Dr. Abesh Bera on a successful PhD defense!

His presentation was titled, "Peer-to-peer regulation of cytoplasmic microtubules and alpha-tubulin isotype mediated regulation of interpolar microtubules facilitate anaphase during mitosis". In it, he discussed his study of microtubule formation utilizing Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model organism, elucidating mechanisms of microtubule allocation between mother and daughter budding yeast cells during mitotic division.

Congratulations to Dr. Logan Ott on a successful PhD defense!

His presentation was titled, "Bacterial plasmid transfer in the gut: Regulation and inhibition". In it, he discussed various approaches taken throughout his study to address the problem of horizontal gene transfer between microbes through plasmid conjugation such as the development of novel research models and investigation of the effects of various compounds and treatments on conjugation.

MGSO members Caleb Skow, Grace Carey, Hannah Watkins, Iris Yin, Jared Meinen-Jochum, Logan Ott, Nicholas Lizer, and Zachary Burton attended and presented research at the American Society for Microbiology Microbe conference in Atlanta, Georgia this weekend.

Logan Ott of the Mellata lab recently published his research in Frontiers in Microbiology titled, "Short-chain fatty acids inhibit bacterial plasmid transfer through conjugation in vitro and in ex vivo chicken tissue explants". Congratulations Logan!

Check out the article here:

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2024.1414401/full

fmicb-15-1414401.pdf

Congratulations to Zachary Burton of the Ikuma Lab on receiving the 2024 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship Award! His proposed research for this fellowship is to investigate biological and environmental factors that influence microbial biofilms to exhibit strong metal corrosion inhibiting outcomes, and how they can be applied in the field. 

Read more about the award below:

https://ndseg.sysplus.com/NDSEG/About/

Congratulations to Lucy Jonas of the Schmitz-Esserr lab on her recent publication in Frontiers in Microbiology titled “Temporal changes in ewe vaginal microbiota throughout gestation"

"[We are] happy to announce that our paper characterizing the ewe vaginal microbiota during pregnancy was recently published in Frontiers in Microbiology. We found that ewe vaginal microbiota differs in community structure and composition during the gestation period."

Read more here:

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2024.1359678/full

fmicb-15-1359678 (2).pdf

Zackry Stevenson received supplemental funding from the NSF in support of an internship at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to distinguish between mercury mobilized during recent wildfires and historical mining activities to determine the source of in-stream mercury to Napias Creek and tributaries through water samples. Moreover, they will test if wildfire-affected soils will lead to increased mercury mobilization, resulting in high levels of methylmercury in Napias Creek. Furthermore, they believe organic matter quality will influence the proportion of methylmercury to total mercury in these watersheds.

Congratulations Zack!

Interdepartmental Microbiology graduate (May 2023) Debarpan Dhar from the Cathy Miller Lab recently published part of his doctoral work exploring the sequences required for gene segment packaging of mammalian orthoreoviruses in PLoS Pathogens. Congratulations Debarpan!

Check out the article here:
https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1012037

journal.ppat_.1012037proof.pdf 

Congratulations to Zackry Stevenson and Michelle Chamberlain of the Swanner lab for both receiving grants from the Itasca Biological Research Station’s Director’s Fellowship and John Tester Graduate Research Fund for their research in Deming Lake, Minnesota. Zak will be studying the effects of molybdenum on nitrogen fixation and Michelle will be studying how iron impacts the formation of a subsurface chlorophyll maximum layer.

Congratulations to Faith Rahic-Seggerman and the Schmitz-Esser Lab on their recent publication in the American Journal of Veterinary Medicine titled, Effects of diet on the bacterial and eukaryotic microbiota across the gastrointestinal tract of healthy rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus)!

"[We are] Pleased to announce that our paper describing the effects of diet on the gastrointestinal microbiota of healthy domestic rabbits was recently published in the American Journal of Veterinary Research. We found that feeding hay had a significant effect on the beta diversity of the bacterial microbiota, but that there were only minor effects on the eukaryotic microbiota composition."